Part 1 of 2 Parts
    Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is considering the deployment of a small modular reactor (SMR) to be built somewhere in Southwestern Virginia. Many of the legislators in Southwestern Virginia and economic development groups also want a SMR built somewhere in their part of the state.
     Dominion Energy wants to have an SMR constructed somewhere in Virginia. Dominion is the state’s biggest electric utility. It signaled an interest in adding an SMR to its fleet a year ago. That desire did not get much attention until Youngkin unveiled his energy plan in October in Lynchburg and emphasized his interest in building an SMR in the Virginian Southwest.
     Dominion has been more circumspect about where they would like to build a Virginian SMR. Todd Flowers is Dominion’s Director of Business Development. He said, “We are looking in Southwest Virginia, and we certainly are looking at other facilities that either have operating fossil fuel plants or fossil fuels plants to be retired.” He also said that Dominion had space at its two existing nuclear power plants in Virginia to add another reactor. Dominion has been licensed to add a third reactor at its North Anna plant but has not yet taken any action.
     The governor of Virginia will not be the one making the decision to build SMRs in the state. That will be left to whichever utility wants to build one. Appalachian Power has also expressed an interest in SMRs. All the state regulatory agencies would be involved.
      Last week, a Northern Virginia developer announced plans to construct at least thirty data centers next to Dominion’s Surry nuclear plant. They have expressed an interest in adding four to six SMRs to power the electricity-hungry facility. Youngkin has said that it might take ten years to build an SMR in the Southwest, but Green Energy Partners, the Northern Virginia developer, said it could be done in about five years at the Surry site.
     The idea of a private developer constructing their own nuclear power reactor is a new one. Conceptually it is no different from a company with its own coal-fired power plant. This has happened often in the past. However, why would a utility look at a fossil-burning power plant as a possible site for a nuclear reactor? The easy answer is that they already have power transmission lines. Siting new transmission lines can often be as difficult as siting a new nuclear power plant.
     The idea of siting nuclear reactors at existing coal power plants has become part of the general thinking about siting SMRs. The Biden administration is trying to draw east European nations away from coal as part of their strategy for reducing carbon emissions. The U.S. has proposed that their existing coal-burning power plants be converted to nuclear plants. Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy released an entire one hundred- and twenty-seven-page report on the subject. The report is titled “Investigating Benefits and Challenges of Converting Retiring Coal Plants to Nuclear Plants.”
Please read Part 2 next